My heart sunk, my stomach filling with dread as I listened to her talk. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but it wasn’t good. “Anneslee,” I croaked, my lips and throat dry, “what are you talking about?”

She was quiet for a second. “What are you talking about?” she whispered, as if afraid of my answer.

“I was calling for a friend. He has a daughter…”

Her sharp intake of breath made me close my eyes.

“What is going on, Annie?”

“Sunny,” she started, “I think you need to talk to Eli.”

“Eli?” I wracked my brain, trying to remember the last time I’d had more than a five minute conversation with my sister and couldn’t. “Eli doesn’t work for me anymore. He hasn’t for months.” When she didn’t immediately respond, I demanded, “Start at the beginning.”

“I don’t know when it started, honestly I don’t. All I know is that last May, a man started stopping by here, demanding to see me. My secretary told him over and over that if he wanted to see me, he needed to make an appointment. He wouldn’t leave more than his first name, Jim, and instead came the next week. He was relentless, coming back over and over.

“Finally, I got tired of him showing up and spending all afternoon in my waiting room, so I agreed to see him.” She swallowed loud enough for me to hear. “He knew who you were—knew that Georgeanne Davis was now Molly Ray. He had a large file with him. Hundreds of pictures of you, kid. Magazine articles, too. It was creepy. He was creepy!

“Then he had photos of you that I hadn’t seen. Actual snapshots. Some of you pregnant, some of you after you’d had the baby. He claimed he was Kevin’s brother and that he wanted to know where his niece or nephew was. He said that if I didn’t tell him, he was going to go to the tabloids and sell his story. He said you couldn’t keep his family from him.”

Kevin’s brother Jim? I wracked my brain, trying to remember the time of my life I’d spent years trying to forget. We never spent any time at Kevin’s house, simply because his dad was such a jerk. But, there’d been the times I’d gone to church with Roxy just so I could see my boyfriend…then it hit me. Kevin had had a little brother, Jamie.

Jamie was four or five years younger than us, someone not even on our radar because he’d still been a kid while we were dating. And we’d been so wrapped up in each other, we didn’t pay much attention to anything but each other. Jamie had been just a slip of a kid, not someone who would leave an impression. I’d never given him a second thought.

Guilt over Kevin and Bryant hit, just like it did every time I thought about them. This time, though, it was enough to make me feel like the room was closing in on me. I felt like I was going to throw up.

“I remember him, just barely,” I whispered, even though I hated admitting that. “But if he wanted information, why not go through Kevin? It’s been eleven years since I let home. Almost eleven since Bryant was born. Not once has Kevin contacted me. Not once has he told me he knew what I did. Or asked if he could see him.”

“Georgeanne.” The way she said my name sucked the air from my lungs. It was the way you spoke to a child when you had something really horrible to tell them. It said, “I love you, everything is going to be okay, but your heart is going to break before it gets better.” I didn’t want to hear what she was going to say. I needed to hang up the phone, but I couldn’t.

“I can’t.”

“Honey, I need you to listen to me, okay? Stay with me and pay attention.”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me, because I couldn’t begin to form words.

“I know this is hard. This is not a conversation we should have over the phone.”

This was a conversation we should never have to have. I knew immediately, even without her saying it. My heart broke. For the boy I once loved with all my heart. For my son, who would never meet the man that helped create him. And for me, because I would never get to say goodbye or tell him I was sorry for keeping him in the dark.

“When?” I asked, realizing too late that tears were streaming down my cheeks.

“Georgea—”

“When, Anneslee? When did he die?”

She sighed. “I’m not sure.”

“How long have you known?”

“I didn’t know until his brother told me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I wasn’t angry with her, none of this was her fault. I only wanted the facts.

“Eli. You were having a hard time, the tabloids were eating you alive. He was worried about how you’d handle it. And when the letters started coming, we got even more worried.”

That was the second time she’d said something about letters. “What letters? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Eli…” She paused, as if she didn’t know what to say.

“Never told me anything about any of this,” I finished for her. “Please?” It was a plea from a desperate person who didn’t want to be in the dark anymore.

“They were cryptic bible verses. Completely random and left open to interpretation. However, when they were combined with Jim’s visits and his threats, I was worried about you. I called Eli and we agreed to keep as much of it from you as we could, so you could focus on your life and the music.”

Eli had known about those pathetic letters for months and hadn’t felt the need to mention them to me. Instead, I’d had to find out when I opened one myself. Not that I took them seriously, but still. Mike had worried about them, and had thought they were some kind of veiled threat.

Something Anneslee had said popped into my mind. “Threats? What threats?”

“I don’t want you to worry, because Eli said he’d handled it and there was nothing to worry about.”

“Well, Eli isn’t handling anything anymore. Please, just tell me what you know.”

She inhaled slowly. “You have nothing to worry about, honey. I swear to you. You’re safe and nothing will happen. It was Jim, sweetie. He said that he was going to make you suffer the way his brother had. That he’d show you what it felt like to wonder where your child was.”

My legs refused to hold my weight as my body started to shake uncontrollably. I fell to the floor in a heap, closing my eyes to force the nausea away. I could hear my sister calling to me, but she was so far away I didn’t answer. None of this was real, it couldn’t be. I’d just wanted to find out about Mike’s parental rights, and instead, I found out so much more.

This was not how this day was supposed to go. Hell, this wasn’t how my life was supposed to go. I demanded a do-over. I put my head on my knees and cried until I had nothing left. Then I curled up in myself and fell asleep.

Chapter Twenty-Six

~ Mike ~

I left the meeting annoyed that it had taken as long as it had. But after the problems at last week’s concert, security had been beefed up and everyone was now on high alert. Molly insisted we were overreacting, but the rest of us didn’t feel that way.

I was running late, though. Lia had over-filled our day, from meetings to wardrobe fittings to radio interviews, but our first appointment was an interview with Nikki’s friend Emily. She had flown out here yesterday, a guest of Nate and Lia for tonight’s show, because this was the only venue we were going to be at for more than a quick stop. Molly had talked to her on the phone a few times, and Emily had apparently passed some sort of test, because for the first time ever, Molly was considering hiring a personal assistant. The girls were interviewing her in less than twenty minutes.

When I turned into the main corridor, Peterson glanced up at me from his spot in front of the door and lines on his usually unhappy face deepened in a frown. “Where’s Molly?”

My steps faltered and my mind whirled as I pointed to the door behind him. “She better be in the fucking room where I left her.”